Nielsen Corrects ABC's 'World News' Viewer Total

FRAZIER MOORE

NEW YORK (AP) — Nielsen's recount for ABC's "World News" last week has boosted its audience by about 800,000 viewers.

Nielsen Media Research reissued its report on Wednesday after ABC disputed the original figures released by Nielsen the day before.

Corrected figures for the week of June 8 show ABC's "World News" averaged 6.99 million viewers (4.8 household rating, 11 share). It was the runner-up newscast to NBC's "Nightly News," with 8.27 million viewers (5.5 rating, 12 share). "CBS Evening News," with 5.40 million viewers (3.7 rating, 8 share), was in third place.

Nielsen had originally said "World News" averaged 6.2 million viewers for the week, and that last Friday's edition was watched by 4.1 million viewers, well below its Friday average of 7.3 million this year.

Friday marked TV's digital transition, when analog signals were cut off and an estimated 2.5 percent of the nation's TV homes lost their TV transmissions. Some ABC affiliates switched over from analog to digital before the midnight deadline, and their viewership was not credited properly in Nielsen's initial report.